Weather-related flight cancellations and delays that snarled U.S. commercial air traffic over the holiday weekend dragged on through Monday, with Southwest Airlines accounting for the bulk of the lingering disruptions a day after Christmas.

More than 3,800 U.S. airline flights were canceled on Monday, including 2,800 operated by Southwest, or nearly 70% of the carrier’s total scheduled for the day, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware.

Delays were reported for more than 7,100 U.S. flight departures and arrivals overall, with several hundred by Southwest.

“Challenges are impacting our customers and employees in a significant way that is unacceptable,” Southwest said in a statement, citing “consecutive days of extreme winter weather.”

The Dallas-based airline, one of the world’s largest low-cost carriers, said it anticipated the disruptions would continue in the days heading into the New Year holiday travel period at the end of the week.

Commercial airline traffic has been upended since last week as an Arctic blast coupled with a massive winter storm dubbed Elliott took shape over the Midwest and swept over much of the United States in the lead-up to the Christmas holiday weekend.

The resulting surge in cancellations and delays, coupled with long lines and missing luggage at airports, spoiled wintertime vacation plans for countless U.S. airline customers during one of the busiest travel periods of the year.

Kyle Goeke, 29, said he would be stuck in Seattle for days after Alaska Airlines canceled his flight, scheduled for early Monday, from Seattle to Missoula, Montana.

He had already traveled from Washington, D.C., to Seattle late on Sunday and said he hadn’t slept at all overnight, forced instead to make lodging arrangements in Seattle.

“Luckily, I have a friend here in this city to help me out, many others are just left by themselves,” he told Reuters.

Many would-be passengers took to social media to express frustration and to try to get a response from airlines.

David Sharp said on Twitter his Southwest Airlines flight from Denver to St. Louis was canceled and the next flight was not available for another two days. He said he would rent a car and drive to his destination.

Southwest Airlines said on Monday it was facing a large number of travel inquiries from customers and was doing its best to get its network back to normal.

Voice actress Grey DeLisle tweeted to Southwest Airlines: “Flight 1824 from Nashville to Burbank was canceled due to Elliot and we haven’t received any rebooking! The kids’ daddy has already missed Christmas now and his luggage is lost with medication in it! Customer Service line busy. Help!”

“My brothers Southwest Airlines flight out of Philly back to El Paso was canceled today and the best they could do was out of Baltimore on Tuesday morning! Nothing anyone could do but so much travel insanity,” wrote another Twitter user named Alex Gervasi.

Some luggage was left unclaimed at William P. Hobby Airport in Houston for two days, while many passengers arrived unable to locate their bags, local media reported.

Madeline Howard said on Twitter she was told by Southwest that her luggage was flying to a different airport despite her flight having been canceled.
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The United States will permit Major League Baseball players from Cuba to represent their home country in the World Baseball Classic next year.

The decision announced Saturday in a news release by the Baseball Federation of Cuba (FCB) could be a big step in once again turning Cuba’s national team into heavy hitters on an international stage.

Major League Baseball confirmed Monday that the U.S. granted the license to FCB. It clears the way for MLB stars such as José Abreu, Yordan Alvarez, Randy Arozarena, Yoán Moncada and Luis Robert to play for Cuba in the WBC in March if they choose to accept a potential invitation.

It’s up to each country’s national governing body to pick the players on its WBC team. Final 30-man rosters are due February 7 for the WBC, which begins March 8 with Cuba facing the Netherlands in Taiwan.

While the sport of choice for much of Latin America is soccer, baseball dominates in Cuba. The island has gained fame around the world for its baseball talent.

But in recent years, hundreds of those players have defected from Cuba to play professionally elsewhere. Most notably, many have become United States residents and stars with major league teams in the U.S.

The defections are largely due to a not-so-uncommon geopolitical spat between the two seaside neighbors, leaving Cuban players stuck in the middle.

Cuban athletes competing on the island can’t earn a paycheck under the communist government, which prohibited professional sports following the Cuban revolution 60 years ago.

Longtime sanctions by the U.S. make it largely impossible for Cubans to play professionally for an American team without defecting. Meanwhile, Cuba historically has not allowed Cuban players who defected to play on their national team rosters.

The defections have taken a toll on Cuba’s performance in international baseball competitions. For example, the Cuban baseball team failed to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after years of previously winning medals in the sport.

In November, Cuba changed its tune and invited several top players who defected to represent the country in the World Baseball Classic, a tournament that features some of the sport’s top players competing in Japan, Taiwan and the U.S.

Weeks later, Cuban officials accused the Biden administration of blocking those players from representing Cuba.

In a statement Saturday, FCB President Juan Reinaldo Pérez Pardo called the permit a “positive step,” and said the Cuban federation should have more information about the team’s WBC roster once it has more details about the license granted by the U.S.

At the same time, Pérez Pardo also criticized the U.S., tweeting Saturday that “it is arbitrary and discriminatory that a permit from the government of this country (the U.S.) is needed to attend” the WBC.
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Federal penalties have increased under a newly signed law intended to protect the cultural patrimony of Native American tribes, immediately making some crimes a felony and doubling the prison time for anyone convicted of multiple offenses.

President Joe Biden signed the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act on December 21, a bill that had been introduced since 2016. Along with stiffer penalties, it prohibits the export of sacred Native American items from the U.S. and creates a certification process to distinguish art from sacred items.

The effort largely was inspired by pueblo tribes in New Mexico and Arizona who repeatedly saw sacred objects up for auction in France. Tribal leaders issued passionate pleas for the return of the items but were met with resistance and the reality that the U.S. had no mechanism to prevent the items from leaving the country.

“The STOP Act is really born out of that problem and hearing it over and over,” said attorney Katie Klass, who represents Acoma Pueblo on the matter and is a citizen of the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma. “It’s really designed to link existing domestic laws that protect tribal cultural heritage with an existing international mechanism.”

The law creates an export certification system that would help clarify whether items were created as art and provides a path for the voluntary return of items that are part of a tribe’s cultural heritage. Federal agencies would work with Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians to outline what items should not leave the U.S. and to seek items back.

Information provided by tribes about those items would be shielded from public records laws.

While dealers and collectors often see the items as art to be displayed and preserved, tribes view the objects as living beings held in the community, said Brian Vallo, a consultant on repatriation.

“These items remain sacred, they will never lose their significance,” said Vallo, a former governor of Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. “They will never lose their power and place as a cultural item. And it is for this reason that we are so concerned.”

Tribes have seen some wins over the years: 

— In 2019, Finland agreed to return ancestral remains of Native American tribes that once called the cliffs of Mesa Verde National Park in southern Colorado home. The remains and artifacts were unearthed by a Swedish researcher in 1891 and held in the collection of the national Museum of Finland. 

— That same year, a ceremonial shield that vanished from Acoma Pueblo in the 1970s was returned to the tribe after a nearly four-year campaign involving U.S. senators, diplomats and prosecutors. The circular, colorful shield featuring the face of a Kachina, or ancestral spirit, had been held at a Paris auction house. 

— In 2014, the Navajo Nation sent its vice president to Paris to bid on items believed to be used in wintertime healing ceremonies after diplomacy and a plea to return the items failed. The tribe secured several items, spending $9,000. 

—In 2013, the Annenberg Foundation quietly bought nearly two dozen ceremonial items at an auction in Paris and later returned them to the Hopi, the San Carlos Apache and the White Mountain Apache tribes in Arizona. The tribes said the items invoke the spirit of their ancestors and were taken in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

The STOP Act ties in with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act that requires museums and universities that receive federal funds to disclose Native American items in their possession, inventory them, and notify and transfer those items to affiliated tribes and Native Hawaiians or descendants.

The Interior Department has proposed several changes to strengthen NAGPRA and is taking public comment on them until mid-January.

The STOP Act increases penalties for illegally trafficking Native American human remains from one year to a year and a day, thus making it a felony on the first offense. Trafficking cultural items as outlined in NAGPRA remains a misdemeanor on the first offense. Penalties for subsequent offenses for both increase from five years to 10 years.

New Mexico U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, who introduced the House bill, said time will tell whether the penalties are adequate.

“We should always look at the laws we pass as not static but as living laws, so we are able to determine improvements that can be made,” she said.

Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, the former cultural preservation director for the Hopi Tribe, said the enhanced penalties are helpful. But he wants to see countries embrace a principle of mutual respect and deference to the laws of sovereign Native American nations when it comes to what’s rightfully theirs. For Hopi, he said, the items are held by the community and no one person has a right to sell or give them away.

The items can be hard to track but often surface in underground markets, in museums, shows, and auction house catalogs, Vallo said.

He said Finland, Germany and the U.K. shared intentions recently to work with U.S. tribes to understand what’s in their collections and talk about ways to return items of great cultural significance. 

“I think if we can make some progress, even with these three countries, it sends a strong message that there is a way to go about this work, there is a mutual reward at the end,” he said. “And it’s the most responsible thing to be engaged in.” 

 
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A fourth electrical substation was vandalized late on Christmas Day in Washington state, leaving homes in Kapowsin and Graham temporarily without power, according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office.

By 7 a.m. Monday, more than 10,500 Puget Sound Energy customers were without electricity across the region, KOMO-TV reported.

The suspects broke into a fenced area and vandalized equipment, causing a fire, officials said. The fire was extinguished, and power was later restored. No suspects are in custody, officials said.

The attacks come as federal officials are warning that the U.S. power grid needs better security to prevent domestic terrorism and after a large outage in North Carolina earlier this month that took days to repair.

The first substation was vandalized about 5:30 a.m. Sunday, followed by a second substation, according to Tacoma Public Utilities. The outages affected about 7,300 customers in an area southeast of Tacoma. Just before noon, the utility had restored power to all but 2,700 customers whose power was estimated to be restored about 6:30 p.m. Sunday.

Meanwhile, just before noon, Puget Sound Energy reported vandalism that had happened about 2:30 a.m. Sunday caused a power outage at one of its substations. The nearly 7,700 customers who lost power had it restored by 5 a.m., Puget Sound spokesperson Andrew Padula said. The company is investigating, along with authorities, and declined to comment further, according to Padula.

In all four cases, the sheriff’s office says someone forced their way into the fenced area surrounding the substations and damaged equipment to cause a power outage.

Power stations have been hit in Washington and Oregon in the past month.

Portland General Electric, the Bonneville Power Administration, Cowlitz County Public Utility District and Puget Sound Energy confirmed six separate attacks on electrical substations in Washington and Oregon in the previous weeks, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting and KUOW-FM in Seattle.
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The death toll from a pre-Christmas blizzard that paralyzed the Buffalo area and much of the country has risen to 27 in western New York authorities said Monday as the region dug out from one of the worst weather-related disasters in its history.

The dead have been found in their cars, homes and in snowbanks. Some died while shoveling snow. The storm that walloped much of the country is now blamed for at least 48 deaths nationwide, with rescue and recovery efforts continuing Monday.

The blizzard roared through the western New York Friday and Saturday, stranding motorists, knocking out power and preventing emergency crews from reaching residents in frigid homes and stuck cars.

Huge snowdrifts nearly covered cars Monday and there were thousands of houses, some adorned in unlit holiday displays, that have been dark from a lack of power.

The massive storm is expected to claim more lives because it trapped some residents inside houses and knocked out power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses.

Extreme weather stretched from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico. About 60% of the U.S. population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians.

The National Weather Service said Sunday the frigid arctic air “enveloping much of the eastern half of the U.S.” will move away slowly.

Buffalo saw hurricane-force winds and snow causing whiteout conditions that paralyzed emergency response efforts.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said almost every fire truck in the city was stranded Saturday and she implored people Sunday to respect an ongoing driving ban in the region. The National Weather Service said the snow total at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport stood at 43 inches (1.1 meters) at 7 a.m. Sunday. Officials said the airport would be shut through Tuesday morning.

With snow swirling down untouched and impassable streets, forecasters warned an additional 1 to 2 feet (30 to 60 centimeters) of snow was possible in some areas through early Monday morning amid wind gusts of 40 mph (64 kph). Police said Sunday evening that there were two “isolated” instances of looting during the storm.

Two people died in their suburban Cheektowaga, New York, homes Friday when emergency crews could not reach them in time to treat their medical conditions. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said 10 more people died there during the storm, including six in Buffalo, and warned there may be more dead.

“Some were found in cars, some were found on the street in snowbanks,” Poloncarz said. “We know there are people who have been stuck in cars for more than two days.”

Freezing conditions and power outages had Buffalonians scrambling to get to anywhere with heat amid what Hochul called the longest sustained blizzard conditions ever in the city.

Ditjak Ilunga of Gaithersburg, Maryland, was on his way to visit relatives in Hamilton, Ontario, for Christmas with his daughters Friday when their SUV was trapped in Buffalo. Unable to get help, they spent hours with the engine running, buffeted by wind and nearly buried in snow.

By 4 a.m. Saturday, their fuel nearly gone, Ilunga made a desperate choice to risk the howling storm to reach a nearby shelter. He carried 6-year-old Destiny on his back while 16-year-old Cindy clutched their Pomeranian puppy, following his footprints through drifts.

“If I stay in this car I’m going to die here with my kids,” Ilunga recalled thinking. He cried when the family walked through the shelter doors. “It’s something I will never forget in my life.”

Travelers’ woes continued, with hundreds of flight cancellations already and more expected after a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow.

The storm knocked out power in communities from Maine to Seattle. According to poweroutage.us, fewer than 100,000 customers were without power Monday at 7 a.m. EDT — down from a peak of 1.7 million.

The mid-Atlantic grid operator had called for its 65 million consumers to conserve energy amid the freeze Saturday.

Storm-related deaths were reported all over the country, from six motorists killed in crashes in Missouri, Kansas and Kentucky to a woman who fell through Wisconsin river ice.

 
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Holiday sales rose this as American spending remained resilient during the critical shopping season despite surging prices on everything from food to rent, according to one measure.

Holiday sales rose 7.6%, a slower pace than the 8.5% increase from a year earlier when shoppers began spending the money they had saved during the early part of the COVID pandemic, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks all kinds of payments including cash and debit cards.

Mastercard SpendingPulse had expected a 7.1% increase. The data released Monday excludes the automotive industry and is not adjusted for inflation, which has eased somewhat but remains painfully high.

U.S. sales between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24, a period that is critical for retailers, were fueled by spending at restaurants and on clothing.

By category, clothing rose 4.4%, while jewelry and electronics dipped roughly 5%. Online sales jumped 10.6% from a year ago and in-person spending rose 6.8%. Department stores registered a modest 1% increase over 2021.

“This holiday retail season looked different than years past,” Steve Sadove, the former CEO and chairman at Saks and a senior advisor for Mastercard, said in a prepared statement. “Retailers discounted heavily, but consumers diversified their holiday spending to accommodate rising prices and an appetite for experiences and festive gatherings post-pandemic.”

Some of the increase reflected the impact of higher prices across the board.

Consumer spending accounts for nearly 70% of U.S. economic activity, and Americans have remained resilient ever since inflation first spiked almost 18 months ago. Cracks have begun to show, however, as higher prices for basic necessities take up an increasingly large share of everyone’s take-home pay.

Inflation has retreated from the four-decade high it reached this summer, but it’s still sapping the spending power of consumers. Prices rose 7.1% in November from a year ago, down from a peak of 9.1% in June.

Overall spending has slowed from the pandemic-infused splurges and shifted increasingly toward necessities like food, while spending on electronics, furniture, new clothes and other non-necessities has faded. Many shoppers been trading down to private label goods, which are typically less expensive than national brands. They’ve been going to cheaper stores like dollar chains and big box stores like Walmart.

Consumers also waited for deals. Stores expected more procrastinators to hit stores in the last few days before Christmas compared with a year ago when people began shopping earlier due to a global disruption of the supply chain that created thousands of product shortages.

“Consumers are trying to spread out their budget, and they are evaluating and shopping at different stores,” said Katie Thompson, the lead of consultancy Kearney’s Consumer Institute.

In November, shoppers cut back sharply on retail spending compared with the previous month. Retail sales fell 0.6% from October to November after a sharp 1.3% rise the previous month, the government said in mid-December. Sales fell at furniture, electronics, and home and garden stores.

A broader picture of how Americans spent their money arrives next month when the National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, comes out with its combined two-month results based on November-December sales figures from the Commerce Department.

The trade group expects holiday sales growth will slow to a range of 6% to 8%, compared with the blistering 13.5% growth of a year ago.

Analysts will also be dissecting fourth-quarter financial results from major retailers in February.
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A brutal winter storm brought Christmas Day danger and misery to millions of Americans Sunday as intense snow and frigid cold gripped parts of the eastern United States, with weather-related deaths rising to at least 32.

A crisis unfolded in Buffalo, in western New York, where a blizzard left the city marooned, with emergency services unable to reach the worst-hit areas.

“It is (like) going to a war zone, and the vehicles along the sides of the roads are shocking,” said New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a native of Buffalo, where eight-foot (2.4-meter) snow drifts and power outages have made for life-threatening conditions.

Hochul told reporters Sunday evening that residents were still in the throes of a “very dangerous life-threatening situation” and warned anyone in the area to remain indoors.

More than 200,000 people across several eastern states woke up without power on Christmas morning and many more had their holiday travel plans upended, although the five-day-long storm featuring blizzard conditions and ferocious winds showed signs of easing.

The extreme weather sent wind chill temperatures in all 48 contiguous US states below freezing over the weekend, stranded holiday travelers with thousands of flights canceled and trapped residents in ice- and snow-encrusted homes.

Thirty-two weather-related deaths have been confirmed across nine states, including at least 13 in Erie County where Buffalo is located, with officials warning the number is sure to rise.

Officials described historically dangerous conditions in the snow-prone Buffalo region, with hours-long whiteouts and bodies discovered in vehicles and under snow banks as emergency workers struggled to search for those in need of rescue.

The city’s international airport remains closed until Tuesday and a driving ban remained in effect for all of Erie County.

“We now have what’ll be talked about not just today but for generations (as) the blizzard of ’22,” Hochul said, adding that the brutality had surpassed the region’s prior landmark snowstorm of 1977 in “intensity, the longevity, the ferocity of the winds.”

Due to frozen electric substations, some residents were not expected to regain power until Tuesday, with one frozen substation reportedly buried under 18 feet of snow, a senior county official said.

‘Conditions are just so bad’

The National Weather Service warned that blizzard conditions in western New York’s Great Lakes region caused by lake-effect snow was continuing Sunday, with “additional snow accumulations of 2 to 3 feet through tonight.”

One couple in Buffalo, across the border from Canada, told AFP Saturday that with the roads completely impassible, they would not be making a 10-minute drive to see their family for Christmas.

“It’s tough because the conditions are just so bad… a lot of fire departments aren’t even sending out trucks for calls,” said 40-year-old Rebecca Bortolin.

A broader travel nightmare was in full effect for millions.

The storm, one of the fiercest in decades, forced the cancellation of nearly 3,000 US flights on Sunday, in addition to some 3,500 scrapped Saturday and nearly 6,000 Friday, according to tracking website Flightaware.com.

Travelers remained stranded or delayed at airports throughout Christmas Day including in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Detroit and New York.

Road ice and white-out conditions also led to the temporary closure of some of the nation’s busiest transport routes, including the cross-country Interstate 70.

Drivers were being warned not to take to the roads — even as the nation reached what is usually its busiest time of year for travel.

The extreme weather has severely taxed electricity grids, with multiple power providers urging millions of people to reduce usage to minimize rolling blackouts in places like North Carolina and Tennessee.

At one point on Saturday, nearly 1.7 million customers were without electricity in the biting cold, according to tracker poweroutage.us.

The figure dropped substantially by Sunday night, although more than 48,000 customers in eastern states still lacked power.

In British Columbia, Canada, a Saturday bus rollover believed to be caused by icy roads left four people dead and sent 53 to the hospital, including two still in critical condition early Sunday.

Hundreds of thousands were left without power in Ontario and Quebec, many flights were canceled in major cities and train passenger service between Toronto and Ottawa was suspended.
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City officials in Jackson, Mississippi, on Christmas Day announced that residents must now boil their drinking water due to water lines bursting in the frigid temperatures.

“Please check your businesses and churches for leaks and broken pipes, as these add up tremendously and only worsen the problem,” the city said in a statement, adding: “We understand the timing is terrible.”

The problems come months after the water system in Jackson — the state capital with about 150,000 residents — partially collapsed. Most of Jackson lost running water for several days in late August after flooding exacerbated long-standing problems in one of two water treatment plants. Residents had to wait in lines for water to drink, cook, bathe and flush toilets.

Along with the order to boil drinking water, city officials said some residents also have reported low water pressure or no water pressure. The city’s water system saw “fluctuating” pressure beginning on Saturday amid frigid temperatures.

The Christmas Day announcement said crews were working to make repairs, but it did not give an estimate on how long the disruption might last.
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President Joe Biden celebrated a quiet Christmas Sunday with his family at the White House and spoke with service members stationed around the world.

“They’re away from their families to protect us,” Biden said in a tweet. “And they have the thanks of a grateful, indebted president.”

The White House said Biden and first lady Jill Biden called members of the Army stationed at Panama City, Panama; the Navy aboard the USS The Sullivans in the Arabian Sea; the Marine Corps at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego; the Air Force at Okinawa, Japan; the Space Force in Europe; and the Coast Guard aboard the cutter Bertholf in Alameda, California.

This is Biden’s second Christmas as president. On Saturday, Biden and his family joined a Mass on Christmas Eve at the White House and continued their holiday tradition of an Italian dinner.

The president and first lady on Friday also carried on another tradition with their second holiday visit to Children’s National Hospital. Biden was the first sitting president to join his wife when they visited hospitalized children and their families before Christmas last year, according to the White House.

Surrounded by Christmas trees and holiday decorations, the first lady read “The Snowy Day” with the president’s help holding up the book.

Biden last week encouraged national unity in a recorded address, calling out the nation’s political divisions and saying he hoped “this holiday season will drain the poison that has infected our politics and set us against one another.”

“So, this Christmas, let’s spread a little kindness,” he said.
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Kathy Whitworth, whose 88 LPGA Tour victories are the most ever by a player on a pro tour, passed away suddenly on Saturday while celebrating Christmas Eve with family and friends, her longtime partner Bettye Odle said. She was 83.

“It is with a heart full of love that we let everyone know of the passing of the winningest golf professional ever, Kathy Whitworth,” Odle said in a statement on Sunday.

“Kathy left this world the way she lived her life, loving, laughing and creating memories.”

The cause of death and location were not disclosed.

Raised in Jal, New Mexico, Whitworth first began playing golf at the age of 15 with her grandfather’s clubs and after winning titles as an amateur and attending Odessa College in Texas, turned pro at 19 and joined the LPGA Tour.

“I was really fortunate in that I knew what I wanted to do,” Whitworth said in a remembrance published on the LPGA Tour’s website.

“Golf just grabbed me by the throat. I can’t tell you how much I loved it. I used to think everyone knew what they wanted to do when they were 15 years old.”

Her mother and father supported her amid a sluggish start to her pro career and she won the first of her 88 LPGA Tour titles at the Kelly Girls Open in 1962.

“I’m glad when I look back on it that I didn’t succeed right away,” Whitworth said.

“When it happened, I was ready.”

She went on to claim six major championships, was named LPGA Tour’s Player of the Year seven times and became the first LPGA player to pass $1 million in career earnings. She claimed her final title at the United Virginia Bank Classic in 1985.

“Winning never got old,” Whitworth said.

Her career included a rivalry with fellow late World Golf Hall of Famer Mickey Wright, who is second behind Whitworth in LPGA Tour wins with 82. Tiger Woods and Sam Snead are tied for the most wins on the PGA Tour with 82.

Her contemporaries said Whitworth’s fiercely competitive nature is what set her apart.

“She just had to win,” Betsy Rawls, another one of Whitworth’s rivals, said on the LPGA website.

“A lot like Mickey Wright and Louise Suggs. There’s just something that drives them. Kathy was a very intelligent person. It was unacceptable for her to make a mistake.

“She hated herself when she made a mistake. She was wonderful to play with — sweet as she could be, nice to everybody — but oh, man, she berated herself something awful. And that’s what drove her.”

LPGA Commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan praised Whitworth’s impact both on and off the course.

“She inspired me as a young girl and now as the commissioner and I know she did the same for so many others,” Samaan said on the LPGA website.

“We all mourn with Bettye, her family and the entire golf world.”
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Taking to the air could be one solution to help get around traffic jams on city highways. Genia Dulot reports from Los Angeles on plans to get air taxis flying in time for the city’s 2028 Summer Olympics.
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Three buses of recent migrant families arrived from Texas near the home of Vice President Kamala Harris in record-setting cold on Christmas Eve.

Texas authorities have not confirmed their involvement, but the bus drop offs are in line with previous actions by border-state governors calling attention to the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

The buses that arrived late Saturday outside the vice president’s residence were carrying around 110 to 130 people, according to Tatiana Laborde, managing director of SAMU First Response, a relief agency working with the city of Washington to serve thousands of migrants who have been dropped off in recent months.

Local organizers had expected the buses to arrive Sunday but found out Saturday that the group would get to Washington early, Laborde said. The people on board included young children.

Some were wearing T-shirts despite temperatures hovering around 15 degrees Fahrenheit (-9 degrees Celsius). It was the coldest Christmas Eve on record for Washington, according to The Washington Post.

Laborde said employees had blankets ready for the people who arrived on Christmas Eve and moved them quickly onto waiting buses for a ride to an area church. A local restaurant chain donated dinner and breakfast.

Most of the arrivals were headed to other destinations and expected to remain in Washington only briefly.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for comment Sunday morning. His office said last week that Texas has given bus rides to more than 15,000 people since April to Washington, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia.

Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, both Republicans, are strong critics of President Joe Biden on his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border, where thousands of people are trying to cross daily, many to seek asylum. Officials on both sides of the border are seeking emergency help in setting up shelters and services for migrants, some of whom are sleeping on the streets.

Republicans argue Biden and Harris, designated the administration’s point person on the root causes of migration, have relaxed restrictions that induced many people to leave their countries of origin. Biden has ended some policies but kept others enacted by former President Donald Trump, whose administration also grappled with spikes in border crossings and at one point separated immigrant families and children as a deterrence initiative.
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Millions of people hunkered down in a deep freeze overnight and early morning to ride out the frigid storm that has killed at least 18 people across the United States, trapping some residents inside homes with heaping snow drifts and knocking out power to several hundred thousand homes and businesses.

The scope of the storm has been nearly unprecedented, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico. About 60% of the U.S. population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather Service said.

Some 1,346 domestic and international flights were canceled as of early Sunday, according to the tracking site FlightAware.

Forecasters said a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — had developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow.

The storm unleashed its full fury on Buffalo, with hurricane-force winds and snow causing whiteout conditions, paralyzing emergency response efforts — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said almost every fire truck in the city was stranded — and shutting down the airport through Monday, according to officials. The National Weather Service said the snow total at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport stood at 43 inches (109 centimeters) at 7 a.m. Sunday.

Freezing conditions and day-old power outages had Buffalonians scrambling Saturday to get out of their homes to anywhere that had heat. But with city streets under a thick blanket of white, that wasn’t an option for people like Jeremy Manahan, who charged his phone in his parked car after almost 29 hours without electricity.

“There’s one warming shelter, but that would be too far for me to get to. I can’t drive, obviously, because I’m stuck,” Manahan said. “And you can’t be outside for more than 10 minutes without getting frostbit.”

Mark Poloncarz, executive of Erie County, home to Buffalo, said ambulances were taking more than three hours to make a single hospital trip and the blizzard may be “the worst storm in our community’s history.”

Two people died in their suburban Cheektowaga, New York, homes Friday when emergency crews could not reach them in time to treat their medical conditions, he said, and another died in Buffalo.

“We can’t just pick up everybody and take you to a warming center. We don’t have the capability of doing that,” Poloncarz said. “Many, many neighborhoods, especially in the city of Buffalo, are still impassable.”

Ditjak Ilunga of Gaithersburg, Maryland, was on his way to visit relatives in Hamilton, Ontario, for Christmas with his daughters Friday when their SUV was trapped in Buffalo. Unable to get help, they spent hours with the engine running in the vehicle buffeted by wind and nearly buried in snow.

By 4 a.m. Saturday, with their fuel nearly gone, Ilunga made a desperate choice to risk the howling storm to reach a nearby shelter. He carried 6-year-old Destiny on his back while 16-year-old Cindy clutched their Pomeranian puppy, stepping into his footprints as they trudged through drifts.

“If I stay in this car I’m going to die here with my kids,” he recalled thinking, but believing they had to try. He cried when the family walked through the shelter doors. “It’s something I will never forget in my life.”

The storm knocked out power in communities from Maine to Seattle, and a major electricity grid operator warned 65 million people across the eastern U.S. of possible rolling blackouts.

But heat and lights were steadily being restored across the U.S. According to poweroutage.us, less than 300,000 customers were without power at 8 a.m. EDT Sunday – down from a peak of 1.7 million. In North Carolina, less than 6,600 customers had no power – down from a peak of 485,000 or more. Utility officials said rolling blackouts would continue for the next few days.

Across the six New England states, about 121,300 customers remained without power Sunday, with Maine still the hardest hit. Some utilities said electricity may not be restored for days.

Storm-related deaths were reported in recent days all over the country: four dead in an Ohio Turnpike pileup involving some 50 vehicles; four motorists killed in separate crashes in Missouri and Kansas; an Ohio utility worker electrocuted; a Vermont woman struck by a falling branch; an apparently homeless man found amid Colorado’s subzero temperatures; a woman who fell through Wisconsin river ice.

In Mexico, migrants camped near the U.S. border were facing unusually cold temperatures as they awaited a U.S. Supreme Court decision on pandemic-era restrictions preventing many from seeking asylum.

Along Interstate 71 in Kentucky, Terry Henderson and her husband, Rick, weathered a 34-hour traffic jam in a rig outfitted with a diesel heater, a toilet and a refrigerator after getting stuck trying to drive from Alabama to their Ohio home for Christmas.

“We should have stayed,” Terry Henderson said after they got moving again Saturday.

Poloncarz of Erie County tweeted late Saturday that 34.6 inches (about 88 centimeters) of snow had accumulated at the Buffalo Airport and drifts were well over 6 feet (1.8 meters) in some areas. Blizzard conditions were expected to ease early Sunday, he added, but continuing lake effect snow was forecast.

Vivian Robinson of Spirit of Truth Urban Ministry in Buffalo said she and her husband have been sheltering and cooking for 60 to 70 people, including stranded travelers and locals without power or heat, who were spending Saturday night at the church.

Many arrived with ice and snow plastered to their clothes, crying, their skin reddened by the single-digit temperatures. On Saturday night, they prepared to spend Christmas together.

“It’s emotional just to see the hurt… that they thought they were not going to make it, and to see that we had opened up the church, and it gave them a sense of relief,” Robinson said. “Those who are here are really enjoying themselves. It’s going to be a different Christmas for everyone.”
…

A fearsome winter storm continued to pummel parts of the United States with blizzard conditions Saturday evening after powerful Arctic winds left more than a million customers without power earlier in the day and caused Christmas travel nightmares.

At least 17 weather-related deaths have been confirmed across eight states as heavy snow, howling winds and dangerously frigid temperatures kept much of the nation, including the normally temperate south, in a frozen grip for a third straight day.

In hard-hit New York state, Governor Kathy Hochul deployed the National Guard to Erie County and its main city, Buffalo, where authorities said emergency services were not functioning.

Late Saturday, the National Weather Service warned that blizzard conditions in the Great Lakes region caused by lake-effect snow would continue into Christmas Day, and that there would be “only slow moderation of temperatures into Monday.”

One couple in Buffalo, which sits across the border from Canada, told AFP that with the roads completely impassible, they would not be making a 10-minute drive to see their family for Christmas.

“It’s tough because the conditions are just so bad… a lot of fire departments aren’t even sending out trucks for calls,” said 40-year-old Rebecca Bortolin.

Her fiance, Ali Lawson, is having back pain but plans to tough it out at home because driving to the hospital is too dangerous.

“We can currently see across the street, but last night we couldn’t see past our porch,” Lawson said.

The “bomb cyclone” winter storm, one of the fiercest in decades, had already forced the cancellation of more than 3,300 U.S. flights Saturday and the delay of nearly 7,500 more, a day after nearly 6,000 were scrapped, according to tracking website Flightaware.com.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tweeted Saturday that “the most extreme disruptions are behind us as airline and airport operations gradually recover” — words that travelers stranded at airports including Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Detroit and New York were holding on to.

New York City resident Zack Cuyler, whose flight home to Houston on Thursday had been postponed then canceled twice this week already, was “pretty steamed” about the chaos.

The 35-year-old now hopes to reach his loved ones by Sunday. “I’m just glad I’ll get to see my family for Christmas,” he told AFP.

Road ice and whiteout conditions also led to the closure of some of the nation’s busiest transport routes, including the cross-country Interstate 70, parts of which were temporarily shut down in Colorado and Kansas.

The National Weather Service warned about lethal conditions and urged residents in affected areas to remain indoors. On Friday, it said wind chills had sent temperatures plunging to minus 48 degrees Celsius.

At one point during the day, nearly 1.7 million customers were without electricity in the biting cold, according to tracker poweroutage.us.

Though power had largely been restored by late Saturday, people were urged to conserve electricity and rolling blackouts were instituted in some parts of the country, including in North Carolina.

Frustration growing

In El Paso, Texas, desperate migrants who had crossed from Mexico huddled for warmth in churches, schools and a civic center, Rosa Falcon, a schoolteacher and volunteer told AFP.

But some still chose to stay outside in frigid temperatures because they feared attention from immigration authorities, she added.

In Chicago, Burke Patten of Night Ministry, a nonprofit dedicated to helping the homeless, said: “We’ve been handing out cold weather gear, including coats, hats, gloves, thermal underwear, blankets and sleeping bags, along with hand and foot warmers.”

Weather officials forecast that dangerously cold conditions would continue throughout the central and eastern United States over the weekend before temperatures returned to more normal weather next week.

Canadian authorities have also issued severe weather warnings. Hundreds of thousands were left without power in Ontario and Quebec provinces, while many flights were canceled in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.

VIA Rail, Canada’s passenger service, said that all trains from Toronto to Ottawa and Montreal would be suspended on Christmas due to a train derailment, while “extreme weather conditions” forced many other cancellations.

Flooding, fierce winds

In the US, transportation departments in several plains states reported near-zero visibility whiteouts, ice-covered roads and blizzard conditions, and strongly urged residents to stay home.

Drivers were being warned not to take to the roads — even as the nation reached what is usually its busiest time of year for travel.

Meteorologist Kelsey McEwen in Toronto tweeted that waves of up to 8 meters were reported in Lake Erie, while in Ohio’s Fairport Harbor, winds gusted to 120 kph, according to the NWS.

The NWS also warned against traveling in the current weather conditions.

“The life-threatening cold temperatures and in combination with dangerous wind chills will create a potentially life-threatening hazard for travelers that become stranded, individuals that work outside, livestock and domestic pets,” its advisory said.
…

Back when 2022 started, Kristina Kadashevych surely could not have envisioned ending the year in the city of Richmond, in the U.S. state of Virginia, performing as the sugarplum fairy (and two other roles) in Richmond Ballet’s annual holiday extravaganza, The Nutcracker.

But then, the Ukrainian ballerina never could have imagined the year would turn out the way it has.

Kadashevych arrived for our interview in a second-floor studio at the Richmond Ballet dressed in a leotard, leggings and soft, puffy booties to keep her feet toasty. She started off, apologizing in advance for her English. “My English is not perfect,” she said — but it was really good — and then she told her story.

Last February, on the day before she was supposed to fly to Paris to join the Kyiv City Ballet for a tour as a guest principal dancer, Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Instead of boarding a plane for Paris, Kadashevych, her 2-year-old son and her parents had to flee their home in Kharkiv, in the eastern part of Ukraine; crowd onto a train; and evacuate to the presumed safer western reaches of the country.

“It was dangerous,” she said, “and we were scared.”

What did they take with them?

“Just kid stuff,” she said with a smile, “and kid. That’s all.”

More soberingly, she recalled how difficult it was to leave home, not knowing when they would be able to return.

“You don’t know where you’re going. You have nothing. It’s a strange feeling.”

‘You cannot plan anything’

They eventually took refuge at the home of another ballet dancer, and Kadashevych, 33, made the difficult decision to leave her family and go ahead and join the ballet company in Paris.

“I needed to work because I have no practice,” she said. “I was just sitting and losing my profession.”

Artistic director Stoner Winslett explained why Richmond Ballet dancers went to great lengths to keep dancing through the pandemic.

“Dancers are like Olympic athletes; if you lie around your apartment and don’t train, you lose your skill,” she said.

Kadashevych has been dancing since she was 9 and professionally for the past 15 years. She never considered another line of work, saying that dancing brought her interesting experiences, extensive travel and unmatched joy. “Ballet gives you everything.”

She left her family, thinking she would return soon. A month or two. It didn’t work out that way as the war raged on.

“Everything is so — how to explain — you cannot plan anything.”

Kadashevych and the Kyiv City Ballet went on a tour — France, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom and later the United States — and were warmly greeted everywhere they went.

“In Europe, our performances were like a charity to help Ukraine,” she said. “Often, a lot of refugees from Ukraine came to those performances, so we felt we were doing important things and helping our country the way we can.

“Here in the U.S., we also have found huge support all over. Here, I also feel that everybody cares about me a lot, and I appreciate that.”

In between the tours, she went home to Ukraine for a month over the summer to visit her son, Lev, who will turn 4 in March.

“It was a very happy time,” she said. “I remember the moment when I come. It was early morning, and my son was sleeping, and I just lay next to him and waited until he woke up, and he could not believe it. ‘Really, Mommy, really?!’ He was so happy.”

‘Unexpected and very interesting’

So, how did Richmond happen?

She shares a common acquaintance with Igor Antonov, another native Ukrainian who was a longtime dancer with the Richmond Ballet and now is an artistic associate with the company and director of Richmond Ballet II. He texted Kadashevych and asked if she’d like to join the Richmond Ballet on a temporary basis. Her answer: Yes.

“It was unexpected and very interesting for me,” said Kadashevych, who came to Richmond while the rest of the Kyiv company returned to Europe.

Kadashevych is temporarily replacing a Richmond Ballet dancer on maternity leave. Winslett said “bringing a ballerina here who is unable to currently dance in her home country would be another way that our organization could further” the ballet’s mission “to awaken, uplift and unite human spirits through the power of dance.”

Kadashevych will remain with the company through February and also will perform in Firebird with Serenade, Feb. 17-19.

For The Nutcracker, Kadashevych danced the roles of the Sugarplum Fairy, the Snow Queen and Mrs. Silberhaus, though not all in the same performances. Kadashevych said she has danced in several versions of Nutcracker, but never one quite like Richmond’s — “It’s absolutely different, so it’s a new Nutcracker for me,” she said — and never three roles in one production.

“For me, it’s unusual … but it’s interesting to try everything because all roles are interesting and beautiful, and I really want to dance them all,” she said. “It’s a challenge, but it’s a good challenge.”

And as for being in Richmond, she said, “I love it. I really love it. The city and the company, as well, because they have really nice dancers, as professionals and as humans. So, I enjoy being here.”

The future? She does not know. She hopes to return to Ukraine soon, perhaps after Christmas, for a short visit. Beyond that, she’s not certain of much of anything, including if the situation will be better at home sooner rather than later.

“We all hope that it will,” she said, “but I’m not sure.”
…

An arctic blast has brought extreme cold, heavy snow and intense wind across much of the U.S. — just in time for the holidays. 

The weather system, dubbed a “bomb cyclone,” is disrupting travel and causing hazardous winter conditions. Where is this winter weather coming from, and what’s in store for the coming days? 

What’s happening? 

A front of cold air is moving down from the Arctic, sending temperatures plunging. 

Much of the U.S. will see below-average temperatures, said Bob Oravec, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland. 

Temperatures may drop by more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celsius) in just a few hours, the National Weather Service predicts. 

Wind chill temperatures could drop to dangerous lows far below zero — enough to cause frostbite within minutes. In parts of the Plains, the wind chill could dip as low as minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 57 Celsius). 

Those in the Plains, the Upper Midwest and the Great Lakes were cautioned to expect blizzard conditions as heavy winds whip up the snow, according to the National Weather Service. 

Who will be affected? 

Pretty much everyone east of the Rockies — around two-thirds of the country — will see extreme weather, said Ryan Maue, a private meteorologist in the Atlanta area. 

Though much of the West Coast will be shielded from the cold, the Arctic front is expected to pass east and south all the way through Florida. 

Heavy snowfall and intense winds could be bad news for air travel, Oravec said. 

And for those planning to hit the road for the holidays, “you’re going to have pretty serious whiteout conditions,” Maue cautioned. 

How long will it last? 

This weather system is expected to bring some major “weather whiplash,” said Judah Cohen, a winter storm expert for Atmospheric Environmental Research. 

The cold isn’t going to stick around for long. After the dramatic plunge that will keep temperatures low for about a week, “everything will snap back to normal,” Cohen said. 

Shortly after Christmas, temperatures are expected to start to warm up again, moving from west to east. They are likely to remain near normal through the end of the year in most of the U.S. 

Why is this happening? 

It all started farther north, as frigid air collected over the snow-covered ground in the Arctic, Maue said. 

Then the jet stream — wobbling air currents in the middle and upper parts of the atmosphere — began pushing this cold pool down into the U.S. 

As this arctic air is pushed into the warmer, moister air ahead of it, the system can quickly develop into serious weather — including what’s known as a “bomb cyclone,” a fast-developing storm in which atmospheric pressure falls very quickly over 24 hours. 

These severe weather events usually form over bodies of water, which have lots of warmth and moisture to feed the storm, Maue said. But with the huge amount of cold air coming through, we could see a rare bomb cyclone forming over land. 

Is this normal? 

The storm is a strong one, but “not unheard of for the winter seasons,” Oravec said. 

It’s pretty normal to have cold air build up in the winter. This week, though, shifts in the jet stream have pushed the air more to the southeast than usual, Oravec said — sweeping the freeze across the country and making storm conditions more intense. 

The U.S. probably won’t reach record-breaking lows, like those seen in the cold snap of 1983 or the polar vortex of 2014, Maue said. 

Still, “for most people alive, this will be a memorable, top-10 extreme cold event,” Maue said. 
…

The city of Alexandria, Virginia, outside Washington, has been called one of the most magical Christmas towns in the United States.

Thousands of people come to enjoy the ambiance of the historic Old Town section or to visit the nearby Mount Vernon Estate and its mansion, the former home of George Washington, who served as the first U.S. president from 1789–1797.

There also are more modern homes in the city with bright outdoor Christmas displays. One of the most spectacular is the over-the-top display at the Farmer family house.

Old Town Alexandria was founded in 1749. Located on the Potomac River, it was a thriving seaport during the colonial era.

Visitor Keira DeMarco from Bethesda, Maryland, strolled down the 18th-century streets, admiring the centuries-old row houses.

“It’s really pretty here during Christmas,” she said. “I like the way people decorate their homes with garlands and put wreaths on their doors.”

Near the waterfront, Old Town sparkles in white.

A large Christmas tree blanketed in white bulbs takes center stage.

A canopy of twinkling white lights brightens the historical buildings on King Street, which features unusual restaurants and shops.

Adding to the ambiance is Gadsby’s Tavern Restaurant with its colonial-clad servers. Opened as a tavern in 1792, Washington was a frequent guest.

Eric Marcinski from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, dined at the restaurant with some friends. “It’s very festive in Old Town and having dinner at a place Washington went to makes it even better.”

Christmas, in Washington’s time

A short ride south by car — and a lot longer by horseback as Washington would have done — is the former president’s home of Mount Vernon along the Potomac River.

The estate lights up for two days of Christmas illuminations and provides candlelight tours that talk about the holiday traditions of the 18th century.

When visitor Rob Maynard from New York saw Christmas trees in the visitors center, he was surprised to learn Mount Vernon wasn’t decorated at Christmas. That’s because during colonial times the holiday was low key and there also weren’t any presents.

“It sure isn’t like that today,” he said. “I wish Christmas was less commercialized and more about spending time with friends and family.”

Christmas at Mount Vernon also features a camel named Aladdin who usually lives on a farm in Virginia but has been a fixture at the estate during the holiday season for the past 15 years.

The reason goes back to George Washington.

In 1789, Washington met a man with a camel who was traveling through the area during Christmastime. Washington paid him to bring the animal to Mount Vernon for a few days for the enjoyment of his guests.

Subtle to fantastic

Today, for the enjoyment of his visitors, Kurt Farmer is providing an entirely different experience with his never-too-many decorations display for about a week at Christmastime.

On a quiet street in Alexandria, his yard and house — even the roof — are covered with thousands of lights and with hundreds of plastic and inflatable carolers, snowmen, toy soldiers and more.

Some are newer, while others are vintage.

There’s a large collection of Santa Claus characters, including the jolly old man with his reindeer, which was hung from a tree.

“The flying Santa takes me back to my childhood,” said Farmer, who grew up in the house. “It’s in the same place I remember for the past 40 years.”

His father started the Christmas tradition, and Farmer continued it after he and his family moved into his boyhood home. It takes him 400 hours to set up the display.

While most visitors are local, others come from farther away.

“The Washington airport is not far from my house, and one night a pilot pointed out my Christmas display to the passengers on board,” he said. “A week later some of the flight attendants on that flight came to my house after finding it on social media.”

Some people come in their pajamas, even groups of adults, Farmer said.

“Maybe it gives them a feeling of home, so they come in something that feels cozy to them,” he said.

Farmer enjoys the “wow” reaction he gets from adults and kids as they look around.

“I’m glad I can provide a bit of happiness for people for a short time,” he said.

For Enrique Alvarez and his daughter Elena, it’s a tradition they look forward to every year.

“It makes us so happy,” he said and smiled. “No matter what my day was like, when I come here, I feel good.”
…

An arctic blast gripped much of the United States Saturday driving power outages, flight cancellations and car wrecks, as plummeting temperatures were predicted to bring the coldest Christmas Eve on record to several cities from Pennsylvania to Georgia.

Temperatures are forecast to top out Saturday at minus 13 Celsius in the city of Pittsburgh, surpassing its previous all-time coldest Christmas Eve high, set in 1983, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.

Cities in Georgia and South Carolina – Athens and Charleston – were likewise expected to record their coldest daytime Christmas Eve high temperatures, while Washington was forecast to experience its chilliest Dec. 24 since 1989.

The flurry of yuletide temperature records was predicted as a U.S. deep freeze sharpened by perilous wind chills continued to envelop much of the eastern two-thirds of the nation into the holiday weekend.

The freeze already produced fatal car collisions around the country with CNN reporting at least 14 dead from weather-related accidents.

The arctic cold combined with a “cyclone bomb” of heavy snow and howling winds roaring out of the Great Lakes region Friday and into the Upper Mississippi and Ohio valleys wreaked havoc on power systems, roadways and commercial air traffic.

Border to border

From the Canadian to the Mexican border and coast to coast, some 240 million people in all were under winter weather warnings and advisories of some sort Friday, according to the weather service.

The NWS said its map of existing or impending meteorological hazards “depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever.”

With energy systems across the country strained by rising demand for heat and storm-related damage to transmission lines, as many as 1.8 million U.S. homes and businesses were left without power as of early Saturday morning, according to tracking site Poweroutage.us.

The disruptions upended daily routines and holiday plans for millions of Americans during one of the busiest travel periods of the year.

The American Automobile Association (AAA) had estimated that 112.7 million people planned to venture 80 km or more from home between Friday and Jan. 2. But stormy weather heading into the weekend likely ended up keeping many of them at home.

Nearly 2,000 U.S. flights were canceled Saturday, with total delays of more than 4,000, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. More than 5,000 flights were canceled Friday, the flight tracking service said.

The city of Buffalo and its surrounding county on the edge of Lake Erie in western New York imposed a driving ban and all three Buffalo-area border crossing bridges were closed to inbound traffic from Canada due to the weather.

The severe weather prompted authorities across the country to open warming centers in libraries and police stations while scrambling to expand temporary shelter for the homeless. The challenge was compounded by the influx of migrants crossing the U.S. southern border by the thousands in recent weeks.

Bitter cold intensified by high winds extended through the deep South to the U.S.-Mexico border, plunging windchill factors from minus 18 to minus 13 Celsius in El Paso, Texas. Exposure to such conditions can cause frostbite within minutes. 
…

Like many U.S. cities, Denver, Colorado, is struggling to accommodate a sudden influx of migrants – more than 1,500 arriving by bus since December 9, according to Denver’s mayor. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti reports the newcomers are straining city social services already stretched thin during the holiday season. Camera:  Scott Stearns, Video editor:  Scott Stearns, Luis Da Costa 
…

The U.S. National Weather Service said Saturday the life-threatening cold temperatures and dangerous wind chills that a good portion of the country is currently experiencing could create “a potentially life-threatening hazard for travelers that become stranded, individuals that work outside, livestock and domestic pets.”

The weather service said, “If you must travel or be out in the elements, prepare for extreme cold by dressing in layers, covering as much exposed areas of skin as possible and pack winter safety kits in your vehicles. In some areas, being outdoors could lead to frostbite in minutes.”

“Blizzard Warnings, Winter Storm Warnings, Winter Weather Advisories and High Winds Warnings blanket much of the Upper Midwest, Great Lakes region, Ohio Valley and parts of the Northeast,” according to the NWS.

The service said there will also be “extremely dangerous travel with whiteout conditions where blizzard conditions occur, expect periodic whiteouts with near-zero visibility and considerable blowing and drifting of snow. Traveling in these conditions will be extremely dangerous, to at times impossible.”

The NWS said the Arctic blast that a large part of the country has experienced is spreading to the Eastern states Saturday.

Temperatures will be well below average from east of the Rockies to the Appalachians, the weather service warned. 
…

U.S. military officials have assured anxious children the arctic blast and snowstorm that wreaked havoc on U.S. airline traffic this week will not prevent Santa Claus from making his annual Christmas Eve flight.

“We have to deal with a polar vortex once in a while, but Santa lives year-round in one at the North Pole, so he’s used to this weather,” said U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant Ben Wiseman, a spokesperson for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, which tracks the yuletide flight.

For 67 years, NORAD, a joint U.S.-Canadian military command based at Peterson Air Force base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, has provided images and updates on the legendary figure’s worldwide journey along with its main task of monitoring air defenses and issuing aerospace and maritime warnings.

The Santa tracker tradition originated from a 1955 misprint in a Colorado Springs newspaper of the telephone number of a department store for children to call and speak with Santa. The listed number went to what was then known as the Continental Air Defense Command.

An understanding officer took the youngsters’ calls and assured them that Santa, also known as Father Christmas or Saint Nick, was airborne and on schedule to deliver presents to good girls and boys, flying aboard his reindeer-powered sleigh.

Santa does not file a formal flight plan, so the military is never quite sure exactly when he will take off, nor his exact route, NORAD’s Wiseman said, although the Santa tracker goes live at 4 a.m. EST (0900 GMT) on Friday on the NORAD website.

Once the jolly old elf’s lead reindeer, Rudolph, switches on his shiny red nose, military personnel can zero in on his location using infrared sensors, Wiseman said.

U.S. and Canadian fighter jet pilots provide a courtesy escort for him over North America, and Santa slows down to wave to them, he added.
…

When President Joe Biden took office in early 2021, he was hoping to restore confidence in American democracy following the false allegations of a “stolen” 2020 presidential vote and then the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Nearly two years later, VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine takes a look at the administration’s record on strengthening democracy at home and abroad.
…

Early on a December morning, thousands of German police officers launched a series of raids across the country, arresting 25 people linked to a plot by a far-right group to overthrow Germany’s government.

Additional arrests were made in Austria and Italy — all of them connected to the Reichsbuerger movement (Citizens of the Reich), described by German authorities as a conspiracy-driven group inspired in part by the QAnon movement in the United States.

The arrests, which included a descendant of German royalty, a former lawmaker and a German special forces soldier, sparked calls for the German government to review security measures and investigate the possible infiltration of Germany’s military by extremist elements.

They also highlighted the shifting and increasingly complex landscape facing Western countries in 2022 and, counterterrorism officials say, for years to come.

“There’s a really hard persistent problem,” U.S. Deputy Homeland Security Advisor Joshua Geltzer told the Center for a New America Security, following the raids in Germany.

“There is a transnational dimension to especially the racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist category,” Geltzer added, noting U.S. officials are seeing members of far-right extremist groups travel for training and as well as some money flowing back and forth among different groups. 

But most of the activity, according to Geltzer and other officials, involves the sharing of propaganda aimed at recruiting new adherents to the cause.

Those followers include people like American Peyton Gendron, the white 19-year-old gunman who recently pleaded guilty to murder, hate crime and terrorism charges for a May 14, 2022, shooting spree in which he targeted and killed 10 Black shoppers at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. 

In the United States, the growth of such extremist thinking and the threat of individuals taking action “has increased dramatically,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told a conference outside of Washington this past October, further warning of an “increasing level of anti-government sentiment.”

A month later, Mayorkas’ Department of Homeland Security reissued a National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin warning the U.S. is mired in “a heightened threat environment.”

“Lone offenders and small groups motivated by a range of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances continue to pose a persistent and lethal threat to the homeland,” the department warned in the bulletin. 

U.S. officials and experts say making the threat more difficult to contain is that while there is a growing strain of anti-government and anti-authority thinking, the driving force is an ideological fluidity that shows few signs of dissipating. 

“I think we are likely to see a continued diversification of the threat,” Colin Clarke, director of research at the global intelligence firm The Soufan Group, told VOA.

“Homegrown violent extremism, jihadist-inspired attacks, and the persistence of the far-right are all likely to remain threats in 2023,” he told VOA via email. “But these could be joined by an upsurge in attacks by other ‘types’ of terrorism, including neo-Luddite/technophobes (attacking infrastructure and 5G networks), so-called ‘Incels,’ a subset of violent misogynists, and conspiracy-driven terrorism, with overlaps to QAnon and other factions heavily influenced by disinformation.”

To cope with the rise in domestic extremism, this past year the U.S. Justice Department set up a new division to deal exclusively with the growing caseload. 

Just a month after the Justice Department announcement, a key DHS official warned the threat environment had become more acute.

“We are seeing … increased specificity as it relates to calls for violence,” said John Cohen, the senior official performing the duties of the DHS undersecretary of intelligence and analysis.

Cohen further warned that the domestic rhetoric also had a foreign connection.

Foreign intelligence services and foreign terrorist organizations were also “promoting socio-political content … for the purposes of sowing discord,” he said, noting, “These narratives have, in fact, led to attacks in this country.” 

 
…

China has sanctioned two U.S. citizens in retaliation for action taken by Washington over human rights abuses in Tibet, the government said Friday, amid an ongoing standoff between the sides over Beijing’s treatment of religious and ethnic minorities.

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Todd Stein and Miles Yu Maochun, along with their close family members, would be banned from entering China. Any assets they had in China would be frozen and they would be barred from contact with people or organizations within China.

The notice said the measures were in response to the U.S. sanctioning two Chinese citizens “under the excuse of the ‘Tibet human rights’ issue.”

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said China was responding to what it considered a violation of the “basic norms of international relations” and that Stein and Yu “behaved egregiously on Tibet and other China-related issues.”

“We would like to stress once again that Tibetan affairs are purely an internal affair of China, and the U.S. has no right to interfere in it, and that gross interference in China’s internal affairs will be met with strong countermeasures from China,” Mao told reporters at a daily briefing.

“We urge the U.S. to withdraw the so-called sanctions and stop interfering in Tibetan affairs and China’s internal affairs,” the spokesperson said.

In an emailed comment to The Associated Press, Stein said the sanction order against him “doesn’t matter” in the larger context.

“What matters is the thousands of prisoners of conscience jailed by Chinese authorities. Let’s not divert attention from their human rights abuses,” Stein said.

Yu could not immediately be reached for comment.

U.S. sanctions

On December 9, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Wu Yingjie, the top official in Tibet from 2016 to 2021, and Zhang Hongbo, the region’s police chief since 2018.

“Our actions further aim to disrupt and deter the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) arbitrary detention and physical abuse of members of religious minority groups in the Tibetan Autonomous Region,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in announcing the sanctions.

An accompanying Treasury Department notice said Wu had been responsible for “stability policies” in Tibet whose implementation involved “serious human rights abuse, including extrajudicial killings, physical abuse, arbitrary arrests, and mass detentions.”

It said that during Zhang’s tenure, police have been engaged in serious human rights abuses, including “torture, physical abuse, and killings of prisoners, which included those arrested on religious and political grounds.”

No specific accusations

The Chinese announcement gave no specific accusations against Stein and Yu.

Stein has been deputy staff director at the Congressional-Executive Commission on China since 2021 and previously served as senior adviser to Sarah Sewall, the undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy and human rights, including serving as her lead staffer on Tibetan issues. Previously, he was director of government relations at the monitoring group International Campaign for Tibet.

The Chinese-born Yu is a senior academic who taught at the U.S. Naval Academy and is a noted critic of the regime of Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping. He served as key China adviser under former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

China in recent years has passed legislation mandating tit-for-tat sanctions against foreign individuals from the U.S., the EU and other countries over perceived slights against its national interests. Washington and others have compiled a long list of Chinese officials barred from visiting or engaging in transactions with their financial institutions ranging from the leader of the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong to local officials accused of human rights abuses.

Communist forces invaded Tibet in 1950, and China has ruled the Himalayan region with an iron fist ever since, imposing ever stricter surveillance and travel restrictions since the last uprising against Beijing’s rule in 2008.

China has also been accused of detaining hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in re-education camps as part of a campaign to wipe out their native language and culture, including through forced adoptions and sterilizations. China denies such charges, saying it has only been fighting terrorism, separatism and religious extremism.
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